The Most Effortless High Blood Pressure Exercise (and it works)

When people ask their physicians for advice to lower their blood pressure, one recommendation that always crops up is to exercise.

If you do not enjoy exercise, or if those superfit people at the gym put you off, there is a better way to lower your blood pressure, all in the privacy of your own home or office, while expending minimum effort.

On 18 September 2015, “Well,” the New York Times‘ health blog, made waves when it answered a reader’s question about the best exercise to reduce blood pressure.

For the answer, the author turned to Dr. Glenn Gaesser, the director of the Healthy Lifestyles Research Center at Arizona State University and and a prolific researcher on exercise and blood pressure.

He answered that any frequent, light exercise could reduce blood pressure, including simply standing up.

According to his research, exercise primarily lowers blood pressure by reducing the stiffness of your blood vessels, so that your heart can pump blood through them with less effort. Accordingly, he recommends that you engage in light exercise multiple times a day, as your blood vessels are most flexible immediately after exercise. Exercising only once a day allows your blood pressure to creep back up as your blood vessels stiffen after 8 to 24 hours without exercise.

In a study he published in the 2012 edition of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, for example, he compared the blood pressure of subjects who exercised for 10 minutes three times a day with those who exercised for 30 minutes only once a day. All the subjects were prehypertensive.

Both groups experienced a drop in blood pressure during the day and evening, but the nighttime systolic blood pressure of only the three-times-a-day exercise group dropped. Thus, the best way to lower your risk of high blood pressure and possible death during the night is to exercise multiple times a day.

The obvious question is where on earth the average person can find the time to exercise multiple times a day between work, household chores, family time, and so forth. This is where the research gets really good.

Dr. Gaesser authored another article in the same journal in 2015, measuring the blood pressure of overweight subjects after four different types of eight-hour work days:

1) a day during which they sat all day,
2) a day during which they stood up between 10 and 20 minutes every hour, without moving. Just stood up.
3) a day during which they walked for one mile per hour for 10 to 20 minutes per hour,
4) and a day during which they cycled for 10 to 20 minutes per hour.

In the last two tests, they performed the exercise on treadmills and bicycles fitted under their desks so they could continue working.

Unsurprisingly, their blood pressure was the highest during the days on which they sat. The other results were not so predictable, however.

Of the three exercise conditions, cycling lowered their blood pressure the most, then walking, then standing. There are two interesting findings here.

First, even though the researchers ensured that the cycling was performed at a pace that equaled the energy expenditure of the walking, the cycling group still benefited the most, even though they basically sat down while just moving their legs. Cycling was also the only exercise that reduced both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, while the others reduced only systolic pressure.

Second, compared to sitting, just standing without moving reduced their systolic blood pressure by four points. That’s without any effort or movement.

Therefore, next time friends invite you to the gym, inform them that the intensity of exercise is irrelevant to blood pressure.

Even standing and “lazy,” easy exercises like slow cycling work. Buy yourself a standing-height desk and/or a stationary exercise bike and prove it!

In fact, the most effective exercises know to lower blood pressure are also completely effortless. This is a set of 3 easy exercises, guaranteed to bring your blood pressure below 120/80 – starting today…